


And the Magpies at Your Window

by RegalMisfortune



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Birds, Developing Friendships, Hanzo Slowly Learns Not To Hate Himself, Nursery Rhyme References, Other Characters Mentioned But Minor, Self-Hatred, Snippets, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 14:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16286327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalMisfortune/pseuds/RegalMisfortune
Summary: After killing his brother, Hanzo was an empty man, a walking shell with nothing to prove and nothing to gain.But, slowly yet surely, he began to feel something again.-A series of snippets through Hanzo's life from Genji's "death" to accepting himself and his place with the reforming Overwatch team, all relating to each stanza of the "One for Sorrow" nursery rhyme.





	And the Magpies at Your Window

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to warm-up from over two months of nothing.

_One for sorrow_

_Two for joy_

_Three for a girl_

_Four for a boy_

_Five for silver_

_Six for gold_

_Seven for a secret_

_Never to be told._

_Eight for a wish_

_Nine for a kiss_

_Ten for a bird you wouldn't want to miss._

 

Hanzo was hollow.

Blood still stained his hands as he knelt before the elders, their words falling deaf on his ears as they argued. He thought he had been doing what was honorable for his family, for _himself_. Yet the frustration and anger that had bubbled over after years of pending it up, keeping it locked in its cage inside him…

The beast that was himself had broken loose and ravaged all that he cared for, and all that was left was were mangled bars and bloodstained walls that was left of his brother.

_Genji._

And as he sat before the elders, hands soaked in blood, his eyes drifted, vacant, towards the nearby window as a magpie pecked at the sill.

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Echoing in the hollow of his heart.

\--

He had remained hollow for so long, he had forgotten what it was like to _feel._

Hanzo should have known that the should-be assassin was his brother. No one else could draw forth emotion so quickly out of him like Genji, anger and ire and pure disbelief. The man-turned-cyborg was a shell of his original appearance, much like how Hanzo was a shell of his former self, yet only simply replacing the vacancy of his heart with the shine of light on polished chrome and the glow of green augmentations.

He couldn’t believe it. Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t. His brother was dead, replaced with a shell that spoke with a metallic hollowness that sounded what Hanzo felt. He had killed him, his blood soaking into his skin, onto his hands, painted across walls and floors. Yet it was his brother inside the metal casing, transformed and moved onto something greater.

 _Alive_.

A pair of black and white birds fluttered from their roost as Hanzo rose from his crouch on the edge of a rooftop, gazing over the city with one last look before dropping into the shadows of the alley below.

For the first time in a long, long time, something warm flitted through the void.

\--

“You lost too, huh?”

Hanzo paused on the side of the old road, turning his eyes to the girl that had been following him since he had crossed the Spanish border into the Gibraltar peninsula. The locals of the town bustled by without a second glance as gum smacked against her lips, the baseball cap shrouding her face from the afternoon sun.

“I know where I must be,” Hanzo told her, giving her short, slight stature a once over but never once relaxing his posture. He knew of a fighter when he saw one, even one as misbelieving as she. She would go down guns blazing even as she twisted her cap so the bill was facing the opposite direction, letting the sunlight glint off her eyes as she gave him a cocky grin.

“Then I guess I will accompany you in being lost, then!” she said cheerfully, falling into step alongside the stoic archer.

Three birds scratched at the side of the road as Song Hana provided a backdrop of friendly chatter.

\--

The others of the slowly reforming Overwatch were wary of him. He didn’t need to read minds or body language to know this much, as he sat alone along a catwalk, legs dangling over the edge as arms rested against the railing, watching the waves roll and crash against the rocks below.

Genji was not here right now, having gone off only days before to pick up an old friend according to Winston, and without him to placate the worries, it seemed that some of the old crew were too busy watching his every move as if he were to turn around to let the beasts within him destroy and consume them all.

He heard the clink of loose metal followed by heavy yet steady footsteps approach, but refused to look away from the waves. The cowboy had been one of the many that watched him, but one of the few that remained their distance, preferring to look on in silence rather than pretend to be friendly or confront him outright. As if he was still waiting on judgement.

Hanzo did his best to leave the man be, never once acknowledging the other’s presence or his habit. This was the first time he ever approached the archer, and Hanzo let in a slow, steady breath as the feet paused behind him, waiting for the insults and old anger to surface.

Instead the warm presence dropped down beside him, booted feet sticking through the gaps in the railing with a sigh as a cork creaked and glass clinking for liquid to pour between them.

The amber liquid caught his eye as the glass was set beside him, but the other man’s attention was back to his liquor, pouring it out into his own cup that had seen far better days, eyes out towards the sea.

A fourth magpie fluttered down to join its brethren roosting on the opposite roof as the hollow in his chest was warmed by the familiar burn of alcohol.

\--

Genji had arrived back at base with his teacher- an omnic from some monastery far in the Nepali mountains. But even still, they barely had time to talk, although Hanzo himself was part of this problem.

He had trouble coming to terms that all he had done was make his brother suffer and not put him into eternal peace like he had thought for so many years. Death would have been a mercy for him, with limbs missing and face almost unrecognizable with scars and burns. Perhaps he should have made sure of this fact long ago when the blood was still wet on his hands, but he hadn’t.

 _He had never considered_.

This person before him was no longer his brother, no longer the brother _he knew_. It was understandable, as he himself was no longer what he was in his youth. A man made hollow and empty, shelled out and left as a husk filled with nothing but ghosting memories and guilt.

But as the green light from Genji’s dragon danced along the silver edge of his blade, snarling and tearing and _protective_ as teeth and sword bore through protective armors of the enemy around him as Hanzo lay clutching at his wounded side and bow out of reach in a mission gone so very wrong, Hanzo couldn’t help but feel the familiar flutter of something warm where his heart used to be.

And as five birds watched on, Hanzo reached out and accepted the metal hand of his brother.

\--

Another mission gone terribly wrong.

Talon forces were storming out of every doorway and alley, guns blazing and startling half a dozen birds from their nests in a chaos of sound. The team had been separated, and Hanzo had run out of arrows long ago. But that didn’t stop him from turning his bow into a melee weapon, the satisfying crack of reinforced alloy against armored helmets.

He was fighting back to back with the cowboy, McCree, _Jesse_ , defending him from close-range attacks while he took care of the long range. The past couple months had led to them into being cordial, tentative friends, but now that they were fighting for their lives, it was as if they were sharing each breath and each heartbeat, a sync between the other in desperate need to have the other and themselves to survive to see the next day.

“Hanzo. Give me an opening.”

The request was given with upmost trust. To rely on Hanzo, the brother-maimer, the cold, empty walking husk. It made something inside him stir, the dragons in his arms churning under his skin as Hanzo said not a word but swept his bow in a low arc, taking the charging enemy’s legs from under them. McCree used that moment to jump onto a crate they used previously as a shield, and a warm, arid wind buffeted against Hanzo’s skin.

Hanzo watched in growing bewildered awe as the man before him became the eye of the storm, gold tendrils of light causing his serape to billow in the sudden breeze as a deep, earthy voice rumbled through the hollow-

_“It’s high noon.”_

\--

The dragons approved of Jesse McCree.

Hanzo did not know how to feel about this, didn’t know what to think. He was an empty shell of a man, carrying on with nothing but guilt to keep him going now. But the entities that dwelt within his arm, in his skin and in the very ink he bore, they liked the scruffy, joking cowboy who carried a dark past like a secret funeral shroud.

 They rumbled in approval through the void of his person whenever McCree took the time to talk to Hanzo. They had accuracy matches in the practice ranges, idle conversations as they cooked in the kitchen, and sometimes simply sitting with shoulders brushing and glasses of some liquor in hand as they watched the waves roll against the cliffs of Gibraltar.

They approved how quick he was to defend his friends, but not falling into blind rages. He walked like he never doubted where his feet were going, even though the path was unclear before him. They were intrigued by his power, pleased that he could hold his own, and were very disapproving of Hanzo as he boxed away the flutter of _something_ , fragile and soft as moth wings, in the empty cage in his chest.

It wasn’t important, Hanzo tried to tell himself, tell his dragons, as he scattered crumbs of a ration bar he had been eating but lost appetite to for the seven magpies that had dropped one by one nearby, waiting for the chance for an easy meal.

It wasn’t important.

\--

Hanzo awoke in the dead of night to someone shaking him.

“Hey, Hanzo-“

If he hadn’t gone from dead asleep to wide awake in the split second that someone touched him, he may have blindly stabbed them with the knife he kept hidden under his pillow. But the voice was familiar, the touch heavy and warm, and Hanzo rolled to his side and glare through strands of hair up at the glinting brown eyes of McCree.

“What?”

“Come on, there’s something I have to show you.”

He grumbled and cursed as he shivered in the cold Russian air, already dreading whatever it was that made McCree wake him up during one of their missions. It was bad enough they had to keep a low profile while creeping through Russian territory, he would rather be warm in bed right now than whatever it is that McCree wanted.

But he entertrained the cowboy in pulling a coat over his shoulders and trudging after the taller man, who seemed far more excited than he was if his slightly skipping steps had anything to go by.

“It’s a real treat,” McCree tried to placate him with a charming smile, pushing open the ancient fire escape door open and stepping out onto the rickety stairs, careful not to disturb the cluster of eight birds roosting in the exposed eaves, squashed together in a mass of fluffed feathers.  

“What would be better than staying indoors?” Hanzo grumbled, but his words trailed off as he walked out into the cold and followed McCree’s finger as he pointed up towards the sky at the brilliant lights that danced across the sky.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” McCree whispered out, smiling up at the Aura Borealis, so bright and so close in the clear Siberian night sky.

“…It is,” Hanzo whispered out, stepping to stand beside the cowboy, head tilted as they stood in silence, gazing upon the natural beauty of the world, his eyes following a shooting star that crossed in the corner of his eye, almost missed by the brilliant display surrounding it.

With the soft warmth of a moth’s wing, Hanzo closed his eyes and wished.

\--

It was New Years Eve, and the common room of Gibraltar was crowded with good food and good company. Liquor sloshed in bottles and cans as laughter filled the once lonely Watchpoint, the screen taking up nearly an entire wall counting down the minutes.

Hanzo couldn’t help but laugh as one of the newer recruits, a friendly Brazilian DJ, hook up Genji’s lights to pulse with the music that thrummed in the background. His head felt lighter than it ever had, the drink in his hand and in his stomach warming him as the large German knight nearly bowled him over with a clap to his back.

“Woah now,” McCree caught his arm with a crooked grin of his own, steadying the archer with a wink. “Think we all been drinking a bit much tonight.”

“It is good to have a day where we drink with good cheer than with sorrow,” Hanzo found himself saying, and the knowing look on the cowboy’s face told him that he understood.

The British pilot began to shout along with the livefeed and the others joined in as minutes turned into seconds, growing louder and more boisterous with every passing heartbeat.

_“Three-!”_

Hanzo felt a warm hand on his waist.

_“Two-!”_

Hanzo turned towards the source, tilting his head back to look into McCree’s eyes. Was he always this close?

_“One!”_

He felt the warmth of lips against his own, and it only took nary a moment for Hanzo to drop his drink and take hold of the cowboy’s face, the bristles of his beard tickling his fingertips as drunken shouts from the room and on the holofeed joined the frantic flapping of nine sets of wings flew past the camera and into the shot.

\--

Hanzo took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he sat underneath the tree that looked over Gibraltar from its higher purchase. Winter was not harsh in the Mediterranean, and Gibraltar was quick to shed its rainy weather for something a bit warmer.

He looked at the place and couldn’t help the small, fond smile that crept across his lips that he allowed for himself while he was alone.

When he had first arrived, he thought this would be his prison, an empty cage for an empty man who had nothing but guilt to keep him going. Yet now the hollow in his heart roosted a warmth he hadn’t thought he would ever feel. He had his brother. He had McCree. He had Hana, Bastion, Reinhardt, and Brigitte. There was Winston, Torbjorn, Lucio, and Zenyatta. Fareeha and Angela. They were growing, slowly yet surely, a group of misfits both old and new, famous and unknown.

Hanzo had never known what a true family was until that moment, watching the world below as Hana and Brigitte stepped out of the hangar with one of Hana’s colleagues/friends that she had convinced Winston to let in, waving and calling out to Hanzo with an obvious smile on her face.

The ten birds that had settled around him lazily hopped away as Hanzo rose to his feet, brushing the dust off his knees before heading down the path back towards base.

_Back towards home._

**Author's Note:**

> Wish to support? Feel free to [donate a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/regalmisfortune)  
> Or follow me on [tumblr!](http://regalmisfortune.tumblr.com/)  
> 


End file.
